FROM OLD WORLD GODS TO NEW WORLD RITUAL: KAMAU BRATHWAITE'S "ISLANDS"

Author(s): Kela Nnarka Francis

Source: CLA Journal , DECEMBER 2012, Vol. 56, No. 2 (DECEMBER 2012), pp. 129-148
Published by: College Language Association

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/44325819

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FROM OLD WORLD GODS TO NEW WORLD RITUAL:
KAMAU BRATHWAITE'S ISLANDS

Kela Nnarka Francis

Whereas, you see, as a Caribbean person, we start with the ruin

and our responsibility is to rebuild those fragments into a whole
ciety. We have always been concerned with the rediscovery of
source the revitalization of origins.

Edward Kamau Brathwaite ( The Art of Brathwaite)

Anyone who has experienced carnival ( Junkanoo , Crop

Over) has felt in his or her core that the festival is more
than escapism or a site of political struggle. While carnival
can be politicized, this instinctive feeling that carnival is
more than a political act stems from the religious and
spiritual function of carnival, especially j'ouvert and other
emancipatory carnival celebrations that evolved from en-
slaved Africans celebrating harvest festivals under the
guise of a Lenten carnival or Christmas festival. Histori-
ans studying the African ancestry of Caribbean carnivals
such as Hollis "Chalkdust" Liverpool, J.D. Elder, E. Clem-
ent Bethel, and Edward Kamau Brathwaite often outline
the religious, spiritual, and ritual significance of mas' and
masquerade. In Rituals of Power and Rebellion: The Car-
nival Tradition in Trinidad and Tobago, 1763-1962
(2001), Liverpool states that "the Africans who were en-
slaved in Trinidad must have been acquainted with the
masks of either one or some of the masking traditions of
the Dogon, the Bambara, the Kongo, the Yoruba, the As-
ante, the Igbo, the Dan, the Senufo, and the Ivory Coast
peoples" (59-60) and traces the carnival practices seen in
1838, the year Apprenticeship was ended, back to African
recreational activities during slavery, most notably kal-
enda and cannes brûlées, which predate post-emancipation
carnival.1 J.D. Elder, in his article "Cannes Brulee," also

129

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130 Kela Nnarka Francis

argues that Canboulay is rooted in Af

cording to Elder, Canboulay is a "Blac
in Trinidad and Tobago" that is "ancho
the African cultural traditions brough
by migrants from West Africa" (38). El
"cultural traces are still evident in c
Caribbean society, as zoomorphic mas
dancers, dragons, serpents, butterflie
rokeeť (38) and asserts that it is an Af
vised to celebrate their 'freedom fro
(38).2 E. Clement Bethel, in Junkanoo
hamas (1991), in tracing the etymolog
Robert Dirks and Virginia Kerns's sp
"Bambara's Kano [dance] may have se
for Jamaica's Canoe " (14). Bethel also considers Orlando
Patterson's assessment that Junkanoo is an amalgama-
tion of Igbo, Yoruba, and Ga harvest festival traditions,
each combining ancestral appeals or appeasement with
agricultural concerns through the use of masks and pro-
cessions honoring ancestral spirits and the bounties of the
earth (14). Emancipatory carnivals, therefore, can be
viewed as refashioned religious/spiritual masquerades, as
masked rituals, and while the manifestations within these
carnival rites may differ from island to island, the under-
lying ritual process remains. This essay discusses the
spiritual role of carnival in Edward Kamau Brathwaite's
Islands, the third book-length poem in his trilogy The Ar-
rivants. In particular, I focus on how Brathwaite positions
carnival as a religious rite through what I term the "Afri-
can Masking Process" and on how Caribbean individuals
and nation-states could gain true independence by ac-
knowledging and harnessing the spiritual power of carni-
val.

The African Masking Process

The African Masking Process is based on the idea that
the mask houses a deity or consciousness and the poten-

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 From Old World Gods to New World Ritual 131

tial for enlightenment or understanding of self and com-

munity. Ladislas Segy, in Masks of Black Africa (1976), a
collection of photographs of African Masks, explains the
ritual significance of African masks, stating that the mask
is "the carrier of spiritual reality. Thus what was only de-
sired and vaguely apprehended became real" (9). When an
African mask appears in a text, it signals that the wearer
or observer is engaging in ritualized possession. Through
the mask the wearer or observer comes into contact with
an invisible agent of change.
Wole Soyinka's theory of the "fourth stage" offers a use-
ful explanation of the process of ritual possession. Accord-
ing to Soyinka, the masked actor in a traditional Yoruba
masked-drama, the human celebrant in the communal
ritual of drama and performance, enters a transitional
gulf or underworld - the chthonic realm - where he must
summon all his will and psychic strength to resist disinte-
gration in the face of destructive forces that threaten to
annihilate him utterly. These destructive forces break
down the barrier between individual self and the energies
of the universe traditionally represented as deities and
ancestral spirits, what Segy describes as "invisible arche-
types of human existence" (9). Before the masked actor is
completely stripped of his will or ego/self, he is able to ac-
quire knowledge because he is in contact with these posi-
tive energies of the universe or spirit world. The "fourth
stage" is where this simultaneous resistance and coales-
cence occurs.

Based on Soyinka's theory, I have formulat

phases in the process of ritual possession or
the "fourth stage": opening the chthonic re
the "fourth stage," crossing the "fourth stage
ing from the chthonic realm. These four ph
the African Masking Process, and the perso
this process is called the celebrant. I divide
into phase solely for discussion and to acco
common tongue's "limitations." However, t

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132 Kela Nnarka Francis

may overlap or occur simultaneously

To open the chthonic realm, a mask,
sometimes music must be present3.
determines how long this phase lasts. Entering the
chthonic realm is usually indicated by descent or submer-
sion imagery. In a Caribbean context, it is usually marine
submersion imagery. Traversing the chthonic realm is
marked by chaos (both internal and external) and the by
presence of "destructive" and "constructive" forces. These
need not be separate forces. Both elicit positive changes in
the individual, unless he or she is unsuccessful at resisting
subsumption.4 While traversing, the celebrant will reach
the nadir, the very heart of the chthonic realm, the brink
of annihilation. While in the nadir, he or she will gain
knowledge of self and community. Emergence is some-
times marked by a reversal of the descent imagery but
usually is signaled by a subsiding in internal chaos.
In the Caribbean the "fourth stage" or chthonic realm is
usually rendered through imagery of the Middle Passage.
Wilson Harris's theories of limbo and phantom limb and
his argument for reenacting the psychic phenomenon of
the middle passage resonate with Soyinka's formulation of
the "fourth stage."5 As Harris asserts, the middle passage
is the "limbo gateway between Africa and the Caribbean"
(157) that cannot be equated with the length or duration
of a single trip across the Atlantic. Harris argues that this
limbo, for him represented by the limbo dance, is the "re-
nascence of a new corpus of sensibility that could translate
and accommodate African and other legacies within a new
architecture of cultures" (158). Punning on limbo, Harris
also uses the metaphor of "the phantom limb." The im-
agery of the cramped limbs in limbo or the hyper-extended
limbs of stilt-walkers suggests to Harris a people/culture
compensating for a legacy amputated by (forced) migration
and the subsequent metamorphoses of elements of the Old
World cultures in a new environment. Both the Middle
Passage and the "fourth stage" serve as sites of regenera

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 From Old World Gods to New World Ritual 133

tive creativity. Further, the amputation represented by

the limbo dance and the hyper-extension of the stilt-
walking correspond with the destructive and creative
forces within the "fourth stage."

The African Masking Process in Islands

In an interview with Nathaniel Mackey in 1990,
Brathwaite states that the trilogie form of The Arrivants
"was really a matter of raising an issue, replying to that
issue, and trying to create a synthesis" (Mackey 13). The
issues raised in the first book, Rights of Passage, are po-
litical and spiritual in nature. There is an underlying cor-
relation between the feeling of spiritual abandonment ex-
pressed in such poems as "New World A-Comin'" and
"Journeys" and the nihilism of poems like "Folkways" and
"The Emigrants." Replying to these issues, the second
book, Masks, is decidedly spiritual in its ap-
proach/rendering as a ritualized process. In particular, the
poet/speaker is masked and engages in ritual possession to
access the political and economic history of the slave trade
and migration. As the synthesis of the issues raised and
their response, the third book, Islands, attempts to make
the linkage between spiritual and political survival more
explicit.
Brathwaite goes on to assert that the Caribbean intel-
lectual/artist has "always been concerned with the redis-
covery of source, the revitalization of origins" (23). In Is-
lands, the "source" and "origins" have a strong spiritual
element, and it is after the rediscovery of the Black per-
son's/community's spiritual source and origin (Africa) that
Blacks will gain self-awareness and political power. For
example, Maureen Warner Lewis, in Notes to Masks
(1977), argues that "Islands shows the black man's strug-
gle to retain his own spiritual response towards his envi-
ronment" (10). Part of this struggle is the increased diffi-
culty of the African in the Caribbean, divided by the sea
from ancestral knowledge, to engage the supernatural or

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134 Kela Nnarka Francis

spiritual world. As Funso Ayejine state

and Rebirth of African Deities in Edward Brathwaite's
Islands ," "the New World African must learn to appreciate
the powers of his inherited spiritual forces and to master
the means of communicating with them" (402). Lloyd
Wellesley Brown notes in "The Cyclical Vision of Edward
Brathwaite" that the "major divisions of this work [/s-
lands] are centered on the growing consciousness with
which the West Indian returns from the memories of, and
journey to Africa" (160). In addition, if Masks represents
the "source" and the place of "origin," then this spirituality
being rediscovered in Islands is also linked to the mask
and ritual possession.
While the spiritual role of the mask in Masks has been
discussed by Maureen Warner Lewis in Notes to Masks
(1977), Lloyd Wellesley Brown in "The Cyclical Vision of
Edward Brathwaite," and Gordon Rohlehr in his seminal
text Pathfinders (1981), the mask in Islands, especially as
it manifests in carnival, has been overlooked. Instead both
Brown and Rohlehr read carnival as a form of escapism.
Yet these critics recognize the spiritual journey and awak-
ening consciousness of the speaker(s) in Islands. 6
I argue that this spiritual journey and conscious awak-
ening is facilitated by carnival in Islands, especially as the
festival figures in the text as a syncretism of African spiri-
tual practices in the New World, becoming the New World
ritual equivalent of the poeťs experience in Masks. In the
second book of the Arrivants trilogy, the speaker encoun-
ters the mask in "Masks," puts it on in "Korabra," opening
and entering the chthonic realm and then traversing it by
engaging history and retracing the middle passage/ Middle
Passage from Elmina on the coast back to the Akan King-
dom of the interior. The speaker reaches the nadir in
"Sunsum," gaining several epiphanies about Africa the
place and people versus Africa the myth and that the rit-
ual itself must be repeated. The speaker emerges in "The
Awakening" with the covenant between speaker and Asase

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 From Old World Gods to New World Ritual 135

Yaa, divine drummer and guide, and the assumption that

the process can be repeated/reformulated in the Carib-
bean. Part of the speaker's journey in Islands is the de-
lineation of this New World version of the process created
to access the Old World gods. Four of the poems discussed
below, "Shepherd," "Caliban," "Tizzic," and "Jou'vert" ex-
emplify how the new ritual is developed and how it initi-
ates the fourth stage through direct engagement of the
middle passage. "Ogun" addresses the transition of tradi-
tional African artistry and craftsmanship into a New
World response to commercialization and consumerism.
Together the five poems trace the transformation of ritual-
ized masking from the Old World into ritual masquerade
in the New.
The ellipses that end "The Awakening" appear as little
black islands on the page. These three dots suggest that
part of the project in Islands will be an exploration of the
cultural linkages between West Indian and West African
in the Caribbean, in keeping with Brathwaite's under-
standing of the trilogie form. Islands is a reclamation of
the Afro-Caribbean's abusua (kinship). The poet's journey
in Islands entails reawakening the ancestral knowledge
because

The gods have been forgotten or hidden,

A prayer poured on the ground with water,

with rum, will not bid them come

back. (Braithwaite, "Jah" 65-68)

For the gods to emerge, a more powerful ritual must take

place. This ritual will not resemble the African rituals
wholesale because the "sea is a divider" (71); and along
with the gods, the rituals have been forgotten or buried,
and "the land has; lost the memory of the most secret
places./ / We see the moon but cannot remember its mean-
ing" (61-62). However, the ritual will follow the phases of
the African Masking Process - opening, entering, travers-

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136 Kela Nnarka Francis

ing, and emerging from the chthonic

sage. It is interesting to note that the
lands- "New World," "Limbo," "Rebellio
and "Beginning" - suggest the book has
Of the four prerequisites for opening th
crisis is the first to appear in the poem
from "I"s need to reenact the ritual "I" undergoes in
Masks, the obfuscation of the gods, and the seeming ab-
sence of the mask. The first poem, "Jah," in "New World"
and quoted above, laments that West Africans and West
Indians have been divided by the sea and that Africans in
the Caribbean no longer remember their spiritual heri-
tage. In the face of this separation and unable to remem-
ber Asase Yaa, the divine drummer, "I" seeks to access the
creative matrix now disguised as a spider on the horizon.
However, the "black mask" (of "Korabra"), resonant in the
"dark skin" (of "Jah"), has forgotten the ritual. Without
the ceremonial mask, the poet, in "Homecoming," laments:
[...] we have no name
to call us home, no turbulence

to bring us soft-
ly past these bars to miracle, to god
to unexpected lover. (41-45)

"I" recalls "Korabra" (a poem in Masks which describes the

speaker's feeling of alienation while in Ghana retracing
the slave route) through the word "bars," which evoke the
dungeons unbarred by the mask. This suggests that "tur-
bulence" refers to the mask's ability to churn history
afresh. Turbulence also evokes travel and the sea. In tan-
dem, the turbulence and the barred dungeon signify that
"I" can only reach as far as the threshold of the chthonic
realm, but he cannot yet open, far less enter the "fourth
stage" (turbulence).
"I" is on the verge of "limbo." Brathwaite defines "limbo"
in the glossary, stating that "[i]t is said to have origi-
nated - a necessary therapy - after the experience of the

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 From Old World Gods to New World Ritual 137

cramped conditions between the slave-ship decks of the

Middle Passage" {Arrivants 274). Brathwaite's condensed
analysis of limbo as "a necessary therapy" can be ex-
panded through Harris's theory of limbo. Harris, who also
asserts that limbo is "born [...] on the slave ships of the
Middle Passage" (157), posits another dimension to limbo
that is

overlooked though intuitively immersed perhaps in Edward

Brathwaite's poems, and that is the curious dislocation of a
chain of miles reflected in the dance so that a re-trace of the
Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas and the West In-
dies is not to be equated with a uniform sum. (157)

Limbo is more than a dance; this therapy is the "re-

activated" "journey from the Old World to the new" "in the
imagination" of Blacks in the Americas (157). This "limbo
perspective" renders the middle passage "a limbo gateway
between Africa and the Caribbean" (157).
"Shepherd," which narrates the speaker's participation
in a religious ceremony similar to baptism, represents the
poet's attempt to access this limbo through Afro-Christian
syncretism. The aural imagery of the opening lines of
"Shepherd" through the onomatopoeic repetition of
"dumb," recalls the opening lines of "Atumpan" and rever-
berates with "The Making of the Drum," two poems from
Masks, as does "tambourine tinkles" ("Shepherd" 7), which
echoes the iron gong-gong7. This suggests that the
poet/speaker is remapping his spiritual journey from
Masks into the landscape and practices of Islands. These
onomatopoeic images precede the line "the water is wait-
ing" ("Shepherd" 21) and indicates that the drum and
tambourine will facilitate the poet going into the water of
the middle passage, walking "through the humble/ dead"
("Drum" 93), so he may hear the gods speak. Yet, "I" is
still unable to enter the middle passage/chthonic realm.
Responding to the rhythm of the drum, following the
whirling messenger who Rohlehr describes as a "mask and
muse for the poet" ( Pathfinders 216) and standing now at

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138 Kela Nnarka Francis

the river's edge, images that conjure up

side baptism, or the sea as "the home
(216), the poet finds that he can "trav
the water without divesting himself of a historical-
politicized understanding of the middle passage and a
rigid consciousness that dwells on the pain of the separa-
tion caused by the middle passage that predominates the
preceding section "New World." The poet asserts that the
messenger must "pour me out/ so the god can enter the
silver/ so the god can enter the river" ("Shepherd" 49-51).
The poet must access the middle passage and merge past
and present, until he "bleed [s] with the fields' sweat/ with
the sweet backs of labour" (61-62). Now the god can ap-
proach with "his musk of damp and slave/ /ships" (91-92)
and "slowly/ the dumb speaks" (106-107).
The poet/West Indian and the god(s) attempt to con-
verse, but without the interface of the mask, the poet/West
Indian cannot understand (108). In this limbo space, he
asserts that the "streets of my home have their own gods/
but we do not see them/ they walk in the dust" (189). Even
though the gods go unseen these lines announce a shift in
perspective from "Jah" and "New World." Here the gods
are being evoked from the depths of the sea that is no
longer a cultural divider but a source of cultural reconnec-
tion. While engaging the "limbo perspective," the gods "can
walk up out of the sea/ into our houses" (190). Although, as
Funso Aiyejina states, the West Indian "fails to perceive"
the gods, it is more important that they "are present in the
New World" (399). Their presence in the New World
means that a new ritual access is possible.
"Shepherd" alludes to the possibility of this new ritual.
The reference to Afro Caribbean religion in "Shepherd"
accomplishes two things. It shows how, as Brathwaite
states, "African culture survived in the Caribbean through
religion" ( Roots 194) through the synchronisms between
the African and Afro Caribbean drums8. It also suggests
that the "whole cultural complex" (194) that comes along

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 From Old World Gods to New World Ritual 139

with African religion has been fragmented in the Carib-

bean and all but effaced after emancipation. Brathwaite
states that "those elements of it [African religion and cul-
ture] that had survived under the conditions [of slavery] -
elements signaled by things like drum, dance, obeah, song,
tale, and herb - . At emancipation, however, all this came
under attack from a number of quarters" (194-5). We see
three of these elements in "Shepherd," drum, dance, and
song. These three elements allow for possession to take
place. Possession is one of five "interrelated divisions or
specializations" in African worship that also includes divi-
nation, healing, and protection (195). Brathwaite argues
that obeah "is an aspect of the last two of these subdivi-
sions" (195). However, after the demonization of obeah as
"sorcery and Tblack magic'" by missionaries and colonial
law, modern day Afro Caribbean Christian religions no
longer fully heal or protect its participants, at least not
from the hegemonic forces of a colonial or neocolonial gov-
ernment or culture. Instead, the possibility for healing is
there, but the West Indian has been taught to ignore it.
Rohlehr refers to this possibility, stating that the "pro-
tagonist no longer accepts that he lives in a world where
all myth and metaphor have decayed" even though a full
awakening has not been reached (Path 219) and that "the
old capacity for symbol-making did not really die" but "ac-
commodated the new symbols of Christianity" (220). While
I agree with Rohlehr that the poet nears possession as he
progresses through the poem, I do not believe that he ex-
periences full possession. Therefore, while three of the
prerequisites for opening the chthonic realm manifest in
"Shepherd," the poet has not yet arrived at the new ritual
necessary for resolving the crisis of fragmented history
because "I" has not yet found the Caribbean equivalent of
the mask.
However, in "Caliban" the poet witnesses another, Cali-
ban a Caribbean "native," undergo, by masquerading in
carnival, a form of the ritual "I" is trying to recreate. The

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140 Kela Nnarka Francis

poem is split into three sections; the fi

the futility of political revolutions in
colonial attitudes remain unchanged;
sections narrate Caliban's carnival ex
costumes, although not described in "
mulations of the masquerade in "Sun
"Sunsum," the "I" is "masked/ in this wood, straw/ /and
thorns" (Brathwaite 14-16) a form of African masquerade
reminiscent of an egwugwu, the wood and raffia
mask/masquerade in Things Fall Apart, a mask housing
the ancestral spirit. Caliban, though not described as
masked, is participating in carnival. As described earlier,
carnival evolves from several African masquerades. It is
possible to read this incarnation of carnival as evolving
from the ceremonial African mask.
The first section of "Caliban" focuses on pre-
revolutionary Cuba and the imperialist presence of Amer-
ica in the island, a rephrasing of the crisis of culture and
history that the poet/West Indian faces. In section two, all
four prerequisites for opening the chthonic realm are pre-
sent: the carnival costume (mask), steelpan (iron and rit-
ual music), and crisis (imperialism and neo-colonialism),
allowing Caliban to open the chthonic realm. The text
visually signals his entrance into the chthonic realm
through narrowing from the long lines of ten or more syl-
lables in the first section to mainly single syllable lines
with no line going over five syllables. This narrowing of
the text speeds up the reading of the poem and draws the
eyes down the page faster producing the feeling of descent.
The language swiftly progresses from playful descriptors
as "pran-/ cing up to the lim-/ bo silence" (42-44) to "dark-/
ness fall-/ ing" (58-60) to
crawl-

ing round the ship

where his free-

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 From Old World Gods to New World Ritual 141

dom drown (63-66).

Carnival "pran-/ ring" leads directly to a reliving of the slave

ship. The carnival

dip-

ping down
and the black

gods call-

ing (80-84)

allows Caliban to fall "through the water's/ cries" down

"where the music hides/ him" down "where the si-/ lence
lies" (193) and indicates that he is traversing the chthonic
realm. One can interpret "him" as both Caliban and as the
god in "Shepherd" who rises up smelling of the slave ship.
Thus the music of pan, which "hides/ him," becomes sa-
cred, and pan also resonates with the African drum. "Lies"
also has several interpretations. It both references the
place where the silence lies at the bottom of the sea, im-
plying a burial, and suggests that the silence is deceptive.
Thus Caliban can prance up to the limbo silence and ex-
perience this descent, this spiritual ritual, despite the co-
lonial commercialization of the Caribbean and its culture.
The seemingly frivolous prancing leads to a deeper, unno-
ticed spiritual function of carnival.
Caliban reaches the nadir of the chthonic realm as he
approaches the limbo stick in the third section, and the
"silence is in front of me [Caliban]" (98), the silence of the
"dumb gods." The limbo dance, appropriated by tourism as
a "performing act in Caribbean night clubs" ( Arrivants
274), is no less potent, and the silence of the limbo pro-
duced by the intensity of the dancer's concentration and
the seeming emptiness of the chant "limbo/ limbo like me"
("Caliban" 111-112) is also the silence of the depths of the
sea. As Rohlehr states, the shift from third person to first
person narration indicates that "the poet accepts Caliban,
the mas man, as another persona" and that "the three

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142 Kela Nnarka Francis

meanings of 'limbo,' silent neuter void,

dance, and symbolic resurrection ritua
225). Caliban is submerged in the midd
limbo gateway between Africa and the
scends and meets the "dumb gods" ("Ca
in the "silence" of sea and limbo. These
Caliban emerge, "raising me [Caliban]/
"drummers are praising" him and the
carnival "is saving" him (44). Removed
overtones of the religion in "Shepherd,
witnessed Caliban's experience, gains so
of the healing and protective power of
Carnival becomes a portal, an access po
passage and the "fourth stage."
It is possible to read the "dumb god"
limbo as Ogun, Orisha of iron and crea
suggested by Caliban's playing pan as s
of iron. Aiyejina argues that
Ogun is perhaps the most pervasive ancestral
and in the whole trilogy. Through his [Brath
tion of this dual-natured deity the poet demon
terranean ancestral forces may propel the indi
from a state of inertia and acquiescence to that
implosion and the society from apathy to explo

This implosion takes place in "Ogun" in

Islands. In this poem, the speaker descr
is a master carpenter and craftsman. A
the poet's uncle in "Ogun" revisits the
ter who is "threatened by imported meta
glitter of Western civilization" in "The J
of Passage (401). By aligning Ogun and
deity "compliments Uncle Tom's knowl
dation of the black man with an anger
for his growth towards a revolutionar
Aiyejina references Soyinka's argument
contemporary context" Ogun "becomes
of war but the god of revolution" (401). A

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 From Old World Gods to New World Ritual 143

the Uncle is the "storehouse of the ancestral omen" of

Ogun (401), and this implosion of anger is embedded in
the final line of the poem: "emerging woodwork image
his anger" (Brathwaite "Ogun" 46).
This "emerging woodwork image of his anger" may als
reference a mask carved by the uncle either as or pos-
sessed by Ogun. The language preceding the final line
suggests Uncle/Ogun is carving a mask. The wood take
shape
dry shuttered

eyes, slack anciently everted lips, flat

ruined face, eaten by pox, ravaged by rat

and woodworm, dry cistern mouth, cracked

gullet crying for the desert, the heavy black

enduring jaw. (40-45)

This mask is linked to carnival through Ogun, god of iron,

war, revolution, and pan. The anger of the mask and the
lying silence of carnival and limbo become linked through
the Orisha as both are products of his presence. Both car-
nival and the mask in "Ogun" exemplify the creativity rep-
resented by Ogun - a chaotic, non-plastic creativity (Soy-
inka 143). In this way "Ogun" establishes the link between
the mask, middle passage, and the "fourth stage." Rohlehr
refers to Ogun's "function" as "a mask for the poet as
craftsman, and as a general symbol of the evolution of
creative process in the Caribbean" {Path 287), an evolu-
tionary process predicated upon "a rediscovery and release
of Spirit" ( Shape 260).
These linkages resurface in "Tizzic," the first poem in
"Beginning." Split into two sections, "Tizzic" contrasts eve-
ryday peasant life of Tizzic in the first section to his ex-
periences of carnival in the second. Like Caliban, Tizzic
also engages in masked ritual. However, the speaker's
perspective is skewed through an Anglo-Christian-
colonized lens, reading Tizzic's actions as escapist. Brown

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144 Kela Nnarka Francis

argues that carnival can represent escapism and that

"[s]omeone like Tizzic loves the carnival in this escapist
sense, using it to get away from the confinement of pov-
erty. But he is really a mere slave of the carnival's heady
escapism. And when carnival is finished he is still a slave
to the things which prompted temporary escape" (163).
However, the contrast between the speaker/poet's re-
sponse to Caliban, especially as the speaker/poet/Caliban
merge in the third section of "Caliban" and the speaker's
response to Tizzic suggests that the perspective in "Tizzic"
is not fully the poet's. Instead, the poem presents a surface
or external view from a person unaware or unconvinced
that carnival is more than a hedonistic act and that the
"silence" lies. This hedonism is suggested in section one
when the speaker states that "you could trust [Tizzic] (ex
cept wid yuh daughter)" ("Tizzic" 22), suggesting that Tiz-
zic is at the very least a lothario if not an outright sexua
predator and recalls the myth of the insatiable sexual ap-
petite of the Negro. This hedonism also relates to a Euro-
pean (French/Italian) concept of carnival as "farewell to
the flesh," two days filled with licentious behavior befor
the forty days of abstinence in lent.
Yet the narrator describes Tizzic in such a way that his
non-carnival life does not suggest slavery. He may be poor
with a "have-/ nothing cottage" ("Tizzic" 43-44), but he also
enjoys a freedom as a man of the soil who, as the narrato
informs us, "looked up one day, see/ de cane flags flyin' an'
know dat you ownin' that green" (29-30) and that "you in
shame no more/ into beggin' the manager dollar;/ that you
free free man" (31-33). Further, even if he is a "mere slave"
of carnival, carnival is the emerging New World ritual to
access the middle passage, "fourth stage," and in so doing
renew one's self. It is significant then that the drum is the
first instrument mentioned. It is also important that the
carnival here is "jamette carnival " ( Roots 197), and the
calypsonians mentioned - Kitch and Sparrow - are mas-
ters of "kaiso" (197), two cultural elements that "had to go"

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 From Old World Gods to New World Ritual 145

under colonial rule (197).9 Lord Kitchener and Sparrow

both produced kaisos that evoke the kalenda warrior
spirit, notably "The Road" (1963) and "Royal Jail" (1961)
respectively10.
Figuring Tizzic's carnival experience as escapism is also
contradicted by the word "apotheosis," which describes
Tizzic's experience in the poem. Through this word, carni-
val is positioned as the ritual access to the "fourth stage"
and various states of being through the limbo gateway
because carnival and its participants/celebrants gain god-
like status. The temporariness of carnival that Brown calls
"escapism" is due more to the encroachment of Christian-
ity into the ritual where the "midnight church/ / bell fell
across the glow" ("Tizzic" 67-68) of the two-day festival
and "[b]ehind the masks, grave/ / Lenten sorrows waited"
(68-69). This is also suggested by the contrast between
Tizzic's "ringin' a bell to tell/ what we half acre mean,"
signaling life (25) and the church bell, signaling death,
dividing the "glow" and knelling in the self-imposed depri-
vation of Lent as well as the word "grave" and its funerary
connotation. After Ash Wednesday Tizzic is a slave again,
but the poem does not suggest that he is a slave to his
poverty. Instead, he remains a slave to the drum and mu-
sic. The warning here may be that Tizzic cannot translate
this carnival apotheosis into his everyday life and incorpo-
rate it into the message his actions relay to his fellow vil-
lagers. This is due to the consistent effort of the plan-
tocracy to do away with the African retentions in the Car-
ibbean population. Thus Tizzic, as Rohlehr argues, returns
"after the jump-up" to "this sense of doom that can neither
be dodged nor overcome" that art offers an "unsuccessful
confrontation with time and death" ( Path 305). Whether
Tizzic uses carnival for escapism or as source of renewal,
the power of carnival, however, is not diminished. Even as
he "escapes," he enters and traverses the chthonic realm,
reaching god(s), ancestors, and yet-to-be-born during car-
nival.

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146 Kela Nnarka Francis

In fact, in "Jou'vert" carnival is invok

The onomatopoeic phrase "bambalula bambulai" (71) in
the second to last line of "Tizzic" opens "Jou'vert": "So/ /
bambalula bambulai " (1-3) and repeats throughout the
poem, creating a praise song rhythm and refrain. The gods
that walked out of the sea unheeded in "Shepherd" take
ascendancy in "Jou'vert" and Christ, métonymie for colo-
nizing-Christianity, "will pray/ to Odomankoma" (14-15).
The suggestion here is that carnival and our understand-
ing of the festival must transcend the imposed Christian
overtones to be truly effective. Once this is accomplished,
"the ping pong dawn comes" (53-54). The ping pong is the
oldest form of steel pan, neither commercialized nor com-
prehendible to the middle class and signals the older un-
commercialized carnival. This older carnival, alive in Jou-
vay, cannot be overshadowed by "Lent-/ / en morning/
hurts" (64-66) and hearts would be "no longer bound/ / to
black and bitter/ ashes in the ground" (68-70). Rohlehr
asserts that the "triumphant Jou'vert sound" of the ping-
ping/steelband "awakens men" who, despite their socio-
economic oppression, "have moved beyond bitterness and
pain, even though the newness of what they create bears
the evidence of past laceration" ( Path 315). This awaken-
ing, spiritual in nature, must precede the political awak-
ening that will lead to a viable revolution. As Rohlehr as-
serts in The Shape of That Hurt (1992), Brathwaite "be-
lieves that personal epiphany must precede communal"
(259). Rohlehr's assessment is derived from Brathwaite's
theory of "Nam" "the utter inner self' (250) "perpetually
discoverable" (251). Revolution results from a growing self-
awareness, a reawakening of one's "Nam" along with and
shaped by socio-historical consciousness. Rohlehr argues
that The Arrivants "works towards a reconciliation of the
two: self-knowledge and rebellion, without whose coinci-
dence any revolution is meaningless" (259). Carnival is
intrinsic to this reawakening because it incorporates the
African spiritual source and origin into the Caribbean

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 From Old World Gods to New World Ritual 147

landscape, providing an alternative to the nihilism of

Rights of Passage without necessitating a physical return
to Africa as in Masks.
The Arrivants has received limited critical attention in
recent years. Further, Islands has received limited critical
analysis of its engagement of African derived ritual prac-
tices through the use of carnival. Carnival's vitality and
relevancy go beyond politics or political acts. In Islands,
moving through the sections from a lamentation of the loss
of ritual in "New World" to an in-between state of search-
ing in "Limbo" section through political action and evolu-
tion in "Rebellion," "I" realizes the spiritual potential of
carnival is obscured by political concerns. When the poet
immerses himself in spiritual revolution in the section
"Possession," he becomes aware of new possibilities in
"Beginning," and in the process finds a new ritual for ac-
cessing the old gods in carnival.
Notes

1 Kalenda refers to stick-fighting as well as the dances, songs, and other ritual
elements accompanying the stick fight. Cannes brûlée translates to "burning of
the canes" and, according to Liverpool, is as much a harvest celebration as it is
representative of acts of protest when slaves would light fires in the cane.
2 A burrokeet depicts a Spanish conquistador astride a donkey. It is portrayed
by a single masquerader.
3 Iron refers more to the creative potential Ogun represents, than to Ogun the
deity, although he does appear in this text.
4 In the "fourth stage" one is subsumed by the forces when one's ego is com-
pletely destroyed.
5 In the discussion that follows I use lowercase for the spiritual analogue to
the historical "Middle Passage" Harris references; I use the capitalized proper
noun for references to the trans-atlantic passage of enslaved Africans.
What this suggests, given the dates of publication for Wellesley Brown's and
Rohlehr's texts, is that their assumption that carnival is a form of escapism may
well be informed by Errol Hill's assumption that carnival has lost any (African)
ritual significance. Thus, while Rohlehr and Wellesley Brown acknowledge the
spiritual journey, and Rohlehr in particular the significance of ritual possession,
neither recognizes or analyzes the spiritual process of carnival expressed in
"Caliban," "Tizzic," and "Jou'vert" or the power of the mask/masquerade.
Rohlehr also makes this assertion in Pathfinders , page 215.
Rohlehr also mentions the "syncretic blend of Akan and Christian rituals" in
Pathfinders (217).
Jamette carnival and emancipation or Jouvay carnival are synonymous.

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 148 Kela Nnarka Francis

10 Both Sparrow's "Royal Jail" (1961) and Lord Kit

won the Road March titles in their respective years. T
played calypso on Carnival Monday and Tuesday. Th
the violence and rivalry between steelbands in the
nival.

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